VIRGINIA BEACH, VA (WTKR)- May has been the Virginia Wesleyan softball team's favorite months for the better part of the last decade. It's when the Marlins get to flex their championship muscle.
VWU begins its quest for a seventh consecutive ODAC Tournament title on Friday when the Marlins take on Bridgewater. The program has seen plenty of success on the conference playoff stage, but coaches and players understand that 2023 is a new year with its own set of challenges.
"The ODAC's the toughest conference in the country," VWU head coach Brandon Elliott pointed out. "To win one (championship) is a privilege and it's something certainly special. To do what this program's done over the past five or six years, that's incredible. We want to continue that tradition, but we're really here for now and focused on winning this year."
"We say it all the time that we're the team that people don't want to face," added senior catcher Caitlin Myers. "We're going to sit there and we're going to wear it proud and go out and do our thing."
The Marlins' "thing" this season has once again been winning. Despite only having three seniors and a heavy dose of young talent, Virginia Wesleyan enters the conference tournament with a 32-8 record and completed its conference schedule with a 16-4 mark. The team has faced a tough schedule, taking on 12 opponents ranked in the top 25 and going 6-6 against those squads. VWU enters the postseason on a nine game winning streak and knows stakes are higher once May rolls around.
"It's the time of the year you don't think about tomorrow, you gotta go out and win today," Elliott noted. "I think we've put ourselves in position and we have a good resume to potentially play in the NCAA Tournament, but we don't want to put that into anybody's hands. We want to take care of business in the ODAC Tournament."
"This year, we've kind of had a rocky start and we're definitely peaking," Myers said. "Girls are hitting the top part of their game and we're looking good."
Virginia Wesleyan enters the tournament as the No. 3 seed and opens the tournament on Friday against No. 6 seed Bridgewater in Ashland at 4:00 PM. Randolph-Macon and Randolph are the other two teams in the Marlins' pod. The winner of each of the two double elimination pods will meet in a best-of-three championship series. Roanoke begins the ODAC Tournament as the top seed.
